So if you’ve watched TV or been on the internets lately, you’ve seen the footage of Miss South Carolina give a rambling nonsensical answer to the question, “Why can’t so many Americans find the USA on a map?” Whole lotta people have jumped in to mock and ridicule. It’s become an “internet sensation”. Heck, do we still have beauty pageants? What a bunch of ditzes those girls are!
But I can’t join in on the mockery, because what I see isn’t a girl with a pea for a brain, but a girl completely blanking on a tricksy question in a high-pressure situation and just talking through it anyway. And I sympathise.
That question is a hard one to answer. Put yourself in her shoes. You’re a contestant in a beauty pageant. You have to formulate, with not more than a second’s thinking time, a response to a politically dangerous query. Your response must at all costs avoid offending anyone, because this is a beauty pageant. You go to your training – open with one of your stock phrases while you try and figure out what else to say and how to say it – and *blam*. Your mind just goes blank. I’ve been there. Haven’t you ever been there? Hey, you’re on international TV and its the biggest moment of your life, no pressure!
She blanks out. But she’s been training for this for years, and what does she do? She goes to her training. At all costs, keep talking. Do not shut up. Speak. Say something, anything at all. And so she does, and what comes out of her mouth is mostly nonsense, but hell, at least she went for it!
I mean, I’m not saying this girl is a genius and we must respect her enormous intelligence. All I’m saying is, cut her some slack, willya, mockers of the world? There were extenuating circumstances. (And heck, I for one think “Because many Americans don’t have maps” is actually a pretty savvy answer to the question.)
Her name’s Caitlin Upton, by the way, and she’s 17 years old.
So, what say you, blogosphere? Am I just an old soft-hearted fool? Does Miss South Carolina deserve everything that’s coming at her? Is this just a bit of harmless fun?
And am I a hypocrite for all the times I’ve made an “O for Awesome” crack?
7 thoughts on “Aw, Leave Miss South Carolina Be!”
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Poor kid. There’s another clip on Youtube of her on USA Today being much more articulate and laughing about it.
I kinda like a quote by a New Zealand politician (can’t remember who) who once said that the kind of butcher shops that had sawdust on the floor were being banned because there were too many orgasms in the sawdust.
Here here! I mean really, it’s not all that funny. Go ask Bush the same question, in the same circumstances and see what kind of an answet you get!
Let her be. That is hard work up there just watch miss congeniality that will show you what it is like.
I agree with most everything you said – it’s why I couldn’t watch the thing; I had to turn away, I cringed.
But, yeah, I agree with you – your post is most certainly o for oresome.
When you know you’re at the centre of the universe who needs a map?
You want to have her babies.
And if he did, you know they would be such pretty babies!